The GM has marked this game as containing personal and intellectual property.If the GM leaves or deletes the game nobody else will be able to continue the game.

An Inconvenience Rightly Considered (3.5/Pathfinder)

As of January 27, 2015, the game is not open to new players.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. - G.K. Chesterton.

The High Council sits on the island city of the Aihv’, just off the central southern coast. Historically, the Council consisted of a few oligarchs from the most powerful and wealthy Shalidar (or elven) families. At its height, the Council and its members controlled the lands from the southern and eastern oceans, north to the forest of Tivaris and west to the A’nari Keep, and drove most of the Stamm - the monstrous races - to the edges of the map. Humans lived under Shal’ rule – a rule that could be benevolent or tyrannical.

The Council’s authority has diminished over time, as has Shal power. Today, there are a number of independent states, with different governmental systems. A number are under human control and they have claimed seats on the High Council itself – these are the human-controlled states that arose peacefully, with changes in the relative sizes of human populations and changes in economic systems. The traditional system of hereditary aristocratic (and almost exclusively Shal) control has begun to yield to the growing authority and influence of the merchant class. In time a different Council - the Council of the merchant city-states of the Halveetian League - will gain ascendancy.

This is the world the adventurers live in, one where traditional notions of nobility and property are challenged by a growing merchant class, and many people struggle with the question of who owns (and owes) what … or whom

The game has been running since January 2010. During that time, a number of players have come and gone. There are currently 29 PCs played by 17 players. Two players have been in the game since the beginning. As of July 30, 2014, most of the others have been in the game for a year or more. Before I started archiving old threads off to .pdf and saving to Dropbox (see the RTJ and Important Game Links threads), we were approaching 16,000 posts, approximately 13,000 of them in-character. The archived in-character posts are available (in recommended reading order) on the Game Wiki. Posting rate for the GM is 4 to 5x/week (with the expectation that I will not be able to post for every thread on every day). Required posting rate for players is twice weekly.

The game is semi-sandbox, with a greater focus on role-playing than on combat using the D&D 3.5/Pathfinder rules. Roughly 1/3 of the existing PCs are 3.5, and 2/3 are Pathfinder characters. NPCs may be either. The setting is high-magic -- mages are commonplace, magic items are not rare.

That said, gods do not walk upon the earth, and demons and devils do not lurk in other planes. In fact, unless you deliberately go looking for them at the edges of the map, "monsters" are seldom encountered. The "monsters" you meet are merchants and fighters, thieves and noblemen, sailors and bards, priests and huntsmen, mages and jewelers -- people just like the PCs, with moral ambiguities, capable of noble self-sacrifice or terrible cruelty.

The "plot(s)" or "point(s)" of the campaign develop out of the characters and their interactions with one another and with the world itself.

Please note that as of February 2013, I am not accepting PCs for solo storylines -- any new PCs must be designed specifically to join up with an existing storyline and its PCs. Accordingly, character creation will require collaboration with me in order to ensure a good fit -- you should read through the setting information in the public threads (including the Summary of Stories to Date -- which I need to update) and consider what types of storylines and character concepts interest you.

Be prepared and expect that character creation will take some time. Don't apply with a fully-fleshed concept already in mind. Don't come up with that concept until after we have discussed existing plots/characters and after you have decided which plot/PCs interest you. You have to craft a character that can slip into one of the on-going storylines -- and who will stay in that existing storyline without veering off on his or her own, or being kicked out.